Neurotoxin.
Simoz’s leg went completely dead and gave under him. He grabbed the dart and pulled it free, black poison dripping from its hollow point. He fired upwards blowing a lump out of the edge of the platform above, driving his attacker back out of sight. Two more shots blew holes straight through the upper platform, but his choudapt attacker abruptly jumped over the edge.
Simoz fired at him again as he hurtled down. One shot took a lump from the man’s shoulder and tore away a plate of exoskeleton. Without apparently noticing his wound, the man landed solidly, his clawed toes driving into the material of the platform. Simoz snap-shot at him as the numbness spread to his other leg then edged up to his sternum. The shot missed.
‘Earther!’ the choudapt snarled and flung himself forward. Simoz shot again and had the satisfaction of seeing an arm cartwheel away as his attacker fell back off the platform, then his own arms went dead and his vision faded.
Simoz.
…
Simoz.
I hear you.
That is good.
Is it?
Yes. Had there been no immediate response from you …
What?
You would have been dead.
How damaged am I?
The neurotoxin has caused extensive nerve damage. I am now controlling all your autonomous functions.
What about my unautonomous ones?
I am using myself to establish links across the damaged areas.
My feet are hurting.
…
That’s better.
Re-establishing visual cortex.
Simoz blinked as his vision returned, but there seemed to be something wrong with it.
Though everything was sharper it also seemed somehow false. He blinked again and tried to move his arms. They responded to him, but yet again there seemed to be something wrong -
some feeling of disconnection. Levering himself upright, he attempted to stand, but only got halfway before falling flat on his face.
Something not quite right here.
There is a disparity of function. Try again.
Simoz finally managed to stand. As he stood there swaying, his hands suddenly seemed to catch on fire. He screamed and abruptly sat down.
I must use one hundred per cent of my function. Disconnecting from cerebrum.
Mike, no, wait!
The burning in his hands became a deep soreness, a tingling, numbness, then went away completely. Warily Simoz stood again and checked his surroundings. Everything seemed to be working perfectly now, only inside him there lay a terrible emptiness.
Mike?
…
Mike?
Simoz nodded to himself, then stooped and retrieved his weapons. He was alone in the anchor root, and especially aware that no corpse without an arm lay here on the floor where the platform had come to rest.
I don’t know if you can hear me, Mike, but this has to be Separatist terrorism. Why else would someone be wandering about with a neurotoxin weapon?
Simoz stepped off the platform and walked to where an arm lay in a pool of watery blood.
He circled until he found a smeared area of the same then followed the dripped trail into a side-branching tunnel of the anchor root, stepping warily on slippery floor under the blue luminescence. The biolights were restless on the ceiling and it was because he was keeping half an eye on them that he did not immediately see the choudapt. There came a low whickering sound and Simoz ducked before he knew why he was ducking and glanced behind him to see one of the neurotoxin darts bouncing across the floor. He fired reflexively at a half-seen shape, then pursued when that shape rose from the shadows at the side of the tunnel and fled.
Damnit Mike, this is the only way. You didn’t give a precise location for that encysted choud. I’d bet this bastard knows where it is.
Before rounding a corner in the tunnel Simoz slowed to a walk, since he had no wish to run straight into one of those darts, and glancing back had the dubious pleasure of seeing biolights dropping from the ceiling and scuttling towards him. Not allowing himself panic, he reached into his pocket, removing a shock grenade the size and shape of an acorn. He then edged to the corner and carefully peeked round, guessing the dark shape squatting in the shadows to be the choudapt. Simoz flipped the cap on the grenade and tossed it round. A white flash followed by lots of electric sizzlings ensued. Glancing back at the biolights that were approaching he flipped a grenade in their direction too, closing his eyes against the flash. He opened his eyes to see biolights scattered across the floor of the tunnel, their legs in the air and the luminescence they emitted faltering, then he stepped round the corner.
The choudapt lay sprawled across the tunnel. Simoz advanced on the man and kicked away the tubular dart thrower lying next to his outstretched left hand. The stump of his right arm had some sort of bio field-dressing over it, as did the wound in his shoulder, and he was breathing raggedly. Simoz squatted down next to him and removed the shock stick from his pocket. He altered a setting on its thumb wheel and touched the end of it to the choudapt’s neck.
The low buzzing convulsed the man and he immediately opened his eyes and started to move, but froze as the barrel of Simoz’s thin-gun pressed against his forehead.
‘Separatist?’ asked Simoz.
The man just sneered at him. Simoz altered the setting on his shock stick and touched what he assumed to me the man’s most sensitive area. Judging by the screech that followed he guessed he had been right.
‘Separatist?’ he asked again.
‘Yes,’ said the man.
Simoz noted the slight distraction in the man’s expression. Keeping the shock stick to his groin he turned and shot the biolight that had been creeping up behind. Before the man could react Simoz had his thin-gun back in his face.
‘The parasitic fungus, where did you get it from?’
The man showed an inclination not to answer. Simoz made that inclination go away.
When the man had stopped screaming he seemed more inclined to cooperate.
‘We got it from a preserved choud exported before the retrovirus was used here.’
‘Is it just you here? No, silly question. You’d only lie. I want you to stand very slowly and carefully, then very slowly and carefully I want you to walk to the encysted choud.’
The man looked at him blankly for a moment, then obeyed. Simoz tried to analyse that blank look, knowing that somehow he had made a mistake here.
‘What was the plan? You knew someone would be here with the retrovirus at some point.
Or is this just the usual terrorism?’
‘Yes, terrorism. It works.’
Now that, Mike, was a lie. I wonder what’s really happening here.